It may seem ungrateful, but my first reaction listening through
this box set of Vivaldi sacred music was that there is just
too much of it. 457 minutes of this stuff, which even its advocates
would agree, all sounds very similar, is more than the mind
can comfortably contemplate. Presumably, Newton Classics bought
the rights as a job lot, and from a financial point of view
it would have made little difference if they had only included
three or four discs. Even so, there are some technical problems
with the reissue and a frustrating lack of information in the
liner, both of which may have been resolved if the same money
had been invested on a shorter programme.

The recordings themselves are good. Italian conductor and musicologist
Vittorio Negri was considered an authority on Vivaldi back in
the 1970s, and it is easy to hear why. Without any particular
concession to the then fledgling period performance movement,
he directs performances that have energy and sparkle. His vision
for each movement and work is easily communicated thanks to
the high performance standards of the players and singers. The
unity of the string section is rarely in question, and the choir,
whilst they sometimes become a little blurred in the inner parts,
never fail clearly to articulate the counterpoint.

The list of soloists reads like a who's who, and listening to
these discs back-to-back the individual identity of each of
them really becomes clear. Solo movements for ladies’ voices
(or at least taken by female singers) predominate, so there
is more here for fans of Margaret Marshall and Anne Murray than
for those of Anthony Rolfe Johnson.

The first five discs date from 1976-1980, while the last two
were recorded in 1991. It is a testament to the quality of the
1970s analogue masters that there is no perceptible difference
between them and the later digital ones. The engineering quality
of the originals is explained by the fact that the recordings
were made by Philips. The earlier recordings have been the subject
of at least one re-release on the original label, perhaps to
coincide with the release of the later ones, but Universal has
clearly decided that their earning potential has now declined
to the point that licensing to a budget label is their most
useful role.

This isn't the place for aesthetic ideology, but it has to be
said that if these discs were released on the Philips label
today, they would seem hopelessly dated. The period performance
movement now has such a hegemony over the core Baroque repertoire
that even modern instrument recordings show the influence of
those performance techniques. And great as these recordings
are, it often seems, at least to my 21st century
ears, that I'm listening to Elgar. Some people still have a
taste for this sort of Vivaldi, but even so, it does raise the
question of what, or who, this reissue is intended for. The
encyclopedic nature of the programming suggests it is aimed
at listeners who want to cover the broadest Vivaldi repertoire.
But they are not well served by recordings that don't acknowledge
the developments that have been made in performance practice
and scholarship in recent decades.

Even listeners attracted by the nostalgia value of these recordings
are going to be frustrated by the production values of the reissue.
The liner essay is about the works rather than the recordings,
and there is only so much you can say about eight hours of music
in three and half small pages. The track-listing only gives
the initials of the soloists for each work, requiring frustrating
cross-referencing between the pages. There is no indication
of which recordings are analogue and which digital, admittedly
obvious for recordings made in 1977 and 1991, but what about
1980?

The most serious problem is the mastering flaws on the discs
themselves. There are silent gaps midway through movements,
and at least one of the discs has tracking problems towards
the end, causing it to skip. I'm not sure what the cause of
these problems is, but I speculate that financial constraints
play a part. Like many budget reissue labels, Newton Classics
works on the principle of the greatest possible duration for
the lowest possible cost. In these straitened times, that is
one of the few business models left with scope for even a modest
profit margin. Even so, the long-term viability of the whole
concept it surely dependent on customer satisfaction, so there
is definitely a case for raising the price by a few pounds if
that will raise the standard of the product to a minimum threshold
of quality. Gavin Dixon

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